Surrounded by Idiots

I fully understand the frustration of entrepreneurial CEOs in executing their vision and the sense that they are surrounded with incompetence. It takes patience but the way to achieving their vision is to inspire people to their fullest potential and thereby get 100% productivity out of them rather than measure how many minutes to the hour they are giving you in activity.

I am not arguing on any point as to whether the business owner is right or wrong in anything they think or feel but rather telling stating simply that inspiring excellence is more effective than motivating activity. People can only rise to their full potential and then be inspired to reach for more. No amount of domination is going to surpass the productivity of an inspired workforce.

Inspiration comes from within. Motivation is an external force upon. When you inspire a person, you touch something within them that makes them believe they can achieve something beyond their current state of being. Achievement is the greatest inspirational energy. Reaching beyond oneself – to expand oneself – is the empowering force.

To achieve, one must surpass a goal; and thus the goal becomes the starting point. Involving people in the goal, sharing the goal [the vision of the company] and collectively expanding upon the goal to a unified vision is the core [the driving force] of the inspiration. Clearly communicating and collectively refining the strategy creates buy-in [the foundation] for self-accountability and the inspiration for excellence in execution of the strategy.

How can you possibly get more than 100% out of a person other than to expand them into something greater? You can’t expand a person through an external force exerted upon them (motivation). Whether they accede to your demands or to your bribes, they are diminished. You can only get more than 100% out of a person if you expand upon their current full potential.

Even that aspect of the military process during which they break recruits down during boot camp is obviously designed to make them better people when they come out than they were when they went in. But you do not operate your company in the military. People are free to come and go; not so much so during down economic times but, nonetheless, free to come and go. We don’t need to get into the fact that the newest generations, the workforce, are more mobile and are seeking work environments in which they can grow. ALL generations, ALL people are more productive when they are inspired.

…else you will stay frustrated and stressed out while continuing to beat that dead horse by cracking the whip and demotivating them thus leading to decreasing productivity and profitability as you prove who’s the boss. And, as we all know, economies go through cycles. The current down cycle will eventually change and there will be more job opportunities out there. So start focusing on inspiring your workforce to excellence so that you don’t have to find yourself lonely at the top when the economy improves.